Bloody Marvellous: A Comedy Show about the Middle Ages

Buxton Festival Fringe, 25 July, 5.30pm, and 26th July, 4pm, The Working Men’s Club, SK17 7BJ

Luke is a stand-up comedian and a professor of medieval French literature at Durham University, known academically as Luke Sunderland. He is the author of Rebel Barons (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is a regular panellist on the Stand Comedy Club Newcastle’s monthly show Nerds Just Wanna Have Fun, a unique comedy night blending real research and unexpected discoveries. Nerds has won a Kapow Club award for ensuring that people with autism and learning disabilities are welcomed.

Luke has appeared on many academic-comedy events like Comedy for the Curious, Pint of Science and the Bright Club, and spoken on Radio 4’s “In Our Time”. Luke performed his debut hour “Our Place in the World: A Comedy Show about Billy No-Mates Britain” at the Newcastle, Edinburgh and Brighton Fringes in 2023 and 2024. **** ‘a lovely stage presence…this one’s awesome’ (one4review; full review: http://one4review.co.uk/2023/08/ourplace-in-the-world-4/)

the show brings together Luke’s academic and comedic personalities to offer something distinctive: a comic tour of the medieval world. Rather than the tired medieval themes of kings and battles, it is about medieval ideas, stories and inventions. Featuring props, songs and games, Bloody Marvellous introduces audiences to creatures like sea-centipedes and manticores, dogs with names like Havegoodday, and characters like Eilmer the flying monk. Luke shows off the old world’s taste in tourist tat, and tries to convince audiences that medieval medicine – with treatments involving things like dragons’ blood – was more exciting than the modern kind.

The show will be performed at the Newcastle, Durham, Buxton and Greater Manchester Fringes in July before it hits the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2025.